The Three Faces, 44th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): When a person is alone, they're not so bad. When they form a group, a sort of mental paralysis occurs and they become so befuddled they can no longer differentiate between right and wrong. Some people deliberately join a group just to experience mental paralysis, sometimes even paying a fee, because group think and hive mind are so much easier than thinking for oneself.

Don't take my word for it (you probably don't anyway), but test it for yourself. Go to a sporting event and see if you can find anyone not on the opposite side of the field who doesn't think the home team is the best team ever. Go to a concert and see if anyone in the audience doesn't adore the band on stage and doesn't think they're the best band ever. Go to a Republican gathering and see if anyone will admit that the Democrats might have some good ideas worth sharing, or go to a Democratic convention and see if anyone supports Republican principals (just kidding, Republicans don't have principals). 

As far as spiritual matters are concerned, I think its best for an individual to go it alone. Forget your popes and pastors, your swamis and gurus, your rabbis and imams. Avoid teachers, avoid experts, and most especially avoid scholars - scholars are the worst.  

I'm convinced I'm on to something by being a self-described, self-defined urban monk. I live among the people but allow myself to be lost among the crowd. A hermit, a recluse, a lifelong bachelor, whatever label you want, I live among the people but not with the people. Some might call it misanthropic, but I like individual lower-case people - it's the upper-case People I distrust. 

The tropical wave over the central Atlantic continues to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms. While environmental conditions are conducive for some development over the next few days, the system is expected to encounter strong upper-level winds next week, decreasing its chances for further development into a hurricane.     

 

Day of the Antler, 43rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): I'm available to be the Stable Genius' next press secretary, if he can accept a candidate who'll tell the truth, thinks Christianity is bat-shit crazy, doesn't trust White people, and hates his fucking guts. 

But I'm free Tuesdays through Thursdays (Mondays and weekends don't work for me).

 

Rustle of the Prey, 42nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor):  Deneb, Day of Destruction, 31st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E., or as you probably call it, August 1, 2026, was the warmest day ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. And the El Nino is just getting started. 

A former co-worker of mine, an arch-conservative and climate-change denier, adamantly insisted there was no credible evidence that carbon dioxide affected atmospheric temperature. He would insist that I read some pot-boiler fiction by Michael Crichton, and when pressed on the issue, would hold up  a set of cassette tape lectures he owned titled Water, Not Carbon, Determines the Climate, or some such other drivel. I reminded him that the Eocene had the highest temperatures in the geologic record and the highest levels of carbon dioxide, but he just took that as evidence that nature, not man, controls CO₂ levels, but ignored the correlation between temperature and carbon.  

As for water controlling the climate, I reminded him that Venus can reach an average temperature of 850° F, and if it ever had any oceans, they dried up long ago. However, it is covered by a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid, which, together, trap heat and warm the planet. He insisted that it's self-evident that the only reason Venus is hotter than Earth is that it's closer to the Sun.

I pointed out that the Moon is just as far from the Sun as the Earth,  and can reach temperatures of 250° F in the sunlight. At night, temperatures on the moon drop to below -200° F because it lacks an atmosphere to trap heat after the sun goes down. "Trivia," he sniffed, and walked off with his comforting copy of Water, Not Carbon. 

To be fair, he wasn't a particularly bright man. He also lived in the far exurbs and relied on his cars (he owned several) to get around, get to work, shop, worship, and socialize. His existence was dependent on gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. He took any discussion of climate change as a prelude to limiting CO₂ emissions, and any limitation of CO₂ emissions as an existential threat to his way of life. 

Anyway, tl/dr: it's hot out.

The Brother Heart, 41st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): In the 1979 Stephen King novel The Dead Zone, an ambitious and corrupt demagogue grabs a young child on stage at a campaign rally and hoists him up as a human shield after an assassin opens fire. A photograph of the act gets picked up by the press and destroys the politician's career. 

That's fiction. In real life, the Stable Genius was in Ankara, Turkey last month for a NATO summit. Concerned about his proximity to Iran and the Islamic Republic's death threats against him, he boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras to leave for England, and then snuck into an airport catering container and was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane, not Air Force One or the new Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar.

The press corps and White House staff flew in the Old Air Force One as human decoys in case Iran tried to launch a missile (they didn't). They were told to keep the window shades down, but believed the President was on board the plane with them.

Hiding curled up in a little catering container mounted on a mobile scissor-lift is hardly the macho-man symbol of strength the Stable Genius thinks he projects. Letting the press and his staff serve as unwitting decoys may not be as viscerally shocking as holding up a child as a human shield from an assassin's bullets, but it's just as cowardly.  The ethical thing to do in that situation would have been to secretly board the third plane, and then announce that the Air Force One flight was unexpectedly delayed and keep it on the ground until the Stable Genius appeared publicly in Britain, so that would-be assassins knew their target wasn't on the plane.

But just imagine - curled up in a ball in the fetal position in a catering container, sweating your balls off in the summer heat of Ankara while smelling your own farts and adult diaper during the bumpy ride from one plane to the next, all because you're too afraid to fly in the Eastern Hemisphere.

When the news leaked that he wasn't flying home in the new Qatari gift jet that he had flown on to Turkey, but it was still believed that he had left in the old Air Force One with his staff and the press, the Stable Genius sought the telephone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives, including one reporter’s mother, in its effort to unmask the confidential sources of the leak. Now we know why he was so sensitive and so freaked out by the reports - the truth of the matter unmasks not only his own cowardice but the lies that he and his black-out drunk Secretary of Defense keep telling about the war in Iran. 

They insist that they've won the war, that they have air supremacy, and that Iran has no military assets left after their relentless bombing. If that were the case, what were they so afraid of? Hiding in a little caterer's cart from one plane to the next sure doesn't look like "winning" to me. It looks like weakness. It looks like losing. It looks like cowardice. 

That act alone should be enough to derail a person's political career, but in this anything-goes, "grab 'em by the pussy" Age of the Stable Genius, it's just another news cycle.

 

Day of High Happening, 40th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): As we sit and watch the planet die, it's now official: July 2026 (i.e, the first thirty of the Dog Days) was the hottest month ever recorded in the history of the United Snakes. Last month's average temperature was 76.9° F, topping the 76.8 mark set in July 1936, and 3.3° F warmer than the 1901-2000 average 

The average global sea surface temperature, outside of the polar regions, was the highest on record for July, beating the previous high of 2023. Surface air temperatures around the world in July were cooler than July 2024 by just 0.01° C, leading scientists to consider the two months as the joint-second warmest Julys on record.

In Washington and Oregon this year, more than 2.9 million acres have burned as extreme conditions fueled the fast-moving fires that draped the region in toxic plumes for weeks on end. Oregon has suffered more burned acreage this year than any in recorded history, while Washington is in its most destructive fire season. ever, and the dangers are far from over. There are still months left to go before the highest risks to the desperately dry landscapes begin to subside.

In Spain, officials are worried that the hundreds of thousands of people heading to the hills and beaches to get a better view of Wednesday's solar eclipse will increase the risk of renewed fires. Meanwhile, water levels in the Danube River are at record lows, exposing Roman-era bridges and World War II German warships. 

 

In China, fears over flooding and landslides forced authorities to evacuate more than a million people from their homes last night as a powerful typhoon made landfall. In addition to the torrential rainfall, the typhoon has also fueled a heat wave and Hong Kong recorded its hottest day ever. 

A large area of showers and thunderstorms a few hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is moving lowly westward, and a tropical wave emerging off the coast of west Africa is expected to interact with the system in a couple of days. A tropical depression could form during the latter half of this week while the system moves westward across the central Atlantic toward the Caribbean.

Showers and thunderstorms associated with a separate tropical wave are located about midway between the coast of west Africa and the Lesser Antilles. Some gradual development of this system is possible through mid-week while it quickly moves westward across the central Atlantic toward Venezuela.

Another tree fell in my neighborhood, this one blocking the path along my local walking trail about a mile from my house.  

As Jim Morrison once put it, "I want to get my kicks before this whole shithouse goes up in flames."

 

The Deep Sea Alien, 39th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): A planned power plant for a new Amazon data center in Texas could become the United Snakes' largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Five people in Louisiana and two in Florida have died from Vibrio vulnificus, a flesh-eating bacteria that thrives in warm coastal waters. Vibrio are most common from May through October where seawater tends to be warmer. Due to climate change, however, outbreaks have occurred in recent years in places once thought to be too cold to support the bacteria, such as Chesapeake Bay and the Long Island Sound. 

When you order something from Amazon, you increase the risk of a crabber in Maryland or an oysterman in Patchogue being devoured by flesh-eating bacteria.

You monster.

 

The Moving Hand, 38th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): Much of the problem with trying to talk about consciousness is the word itself is so fluid. "Consciousness" could mean mere awareness, of it could mean sentience. It could mean the creation of a richly detailed mental model of the ego-self, or the luminous experience of that rich creation, including memory, preferences, emotions, and thought. 

In Buddhism, consciousness usually means only awareness, and specifically the awareness associated with each of the six sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind). They've even gone so far as to define 18 forms of consciousness, three for each organ, such as eye consciousness, sight consciousness, and the realm of vision consciousness. 

The focus in Buddhism, or at least Zen Buddhism, is more on "mind" than consciousness. "Mind" isn't the brain, mind is a function of the brain. Just as sight is a function of the eye, and vision the result of sight, thought is a function of the brain, and mind the result of thought. The brain is just another organ, one that secretes thoughts just like the spleen secretes bile and the pancreas secretes whatever it is the pancreas secretes.

I once heard a Zen teacher object to the phrase "I can't get my head around that." Of course you can't, the skull is hard, thick bone, not exactly noted for it's flexibility. Brain matter is softer and probably more malleable, but I wouldn't recommend trying to physically wrap the organ around an object. It's the mind that moves, as they say, and it's the mind that wraps or doesn't wrap around an object or a concept. 

So, are plants conscious? They seem to respond to light and to rain, so they must have some sense of awareness of those phenomena, so I suppose you can say that a plant possess some form of body consciousness and it's corollary, touch consciousness. Whether their reaction to light and rain is in response to sensation or is just a biochemical reaction to photons or water is debatable, but aren't all of our thoughts and feelings and sensations reducible to mere neurochemical reactions? But when that form of potential sensation in a plant is simply called "consciousness" and lumped in with all the other forms of consciousness, confusion begins, and others argue that a plant can't be conscious because it doesn't have thoughts (or at least an organ to secrete thoughts), but they're talking about different things. It's like saying a blind person can't have memory because they don't have sight. 

Today, Electra, was a sitting day. There are among the thoughts my mind secreted as I sat. Now, if I could only get my head around those ideas.       

 

Day of the Mantle, 37th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): My Friday routine is finally different from the previous four days of the Gregorian week. It starts the same - radio alarm at 7:00 am, one hour of WREK's The Classics and a second hour of their Just Jazz programing (although neither is strictly "the classics" or "just" jazz). Make my coffee and take my vitals. As I continue to awaken, I take on the NY Times crossword, Spelling Bee, and Wordle puzzles over my first cup of coffee while I catch up on the news, both MSNOW and email newsletters from Axios, the Guardian, and the Times (I like to triangulate my coverage a bit to get different perspectives).. 

But Fridays are different, because in addition to the daily puzzles, the Times also has a Friday news quiz. I got nine out of 11 right this week, and it's actually something of a point of pride for me not to get them all correct - a 100% score indicates I've spent too much time doom-scrolling and watching the news. Everything in moderation, brother.

But Fridays are famously New Music day, the day most labels release their latest albums. I get some notifications of new releases via email, and each Friday I check out NPR's online New Music Friday lists, and Spotify's Release Radar. Today's emails alerted me to a new edition of Jim O'Rourke's Steamroom series (number 68) on Bandcamp and of Thor Harris' new Ditch Girls project, also available on Bandcamp as well as streaming on Spotify, which is surprising because he took much of his own music off of the platform a year or two ago. NPR listed a new albums by electronic artist Lawrence English and by Alabama indie rocker Lee Bains, both of which I found on Spotify. And finally my Release Radar included an album by avant-garde percussionist David Moss (who I used to see in the 1970s performing with local Boston jazz band Baird Hersey & the Year of the Ear) featuring a cast of all-star collaborators including John Zorn, Arto Lindsey, Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, David van Tieghem, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma.

Much of my Fridays are consumer by tracking down all those musical leads and time spent listening to it all. To make it worse, I got a late start today because I was up late last night listening to the Red Sox' 13-inning win over the Chicago White Sox, quite honestly one of the best baseball games I've followed in years (Boston came from behind five times to tie the game, three times in extra innings). 

I fell so far behind that I wound up blowing off my alternating day walk. The forecast at 2:00 pm said there was a 70% chance of rain between 3:00 and 4:00, and that was good enough for me. The rain never came, but to be honest, I didn't want to walk today. I was tired and enjoying all my new Friday music. I try to get in an eight-mile Van Buren on my walks, but if a one-mile walk is named after Washington, the first President, what do I call a day with less than one mile covered? A King George, I suppose. Today was a mad King George day. 

Fridays once also meant watching Bill Maher on HBO but not anymore - fuck that guy. He's changed - I think the covid shutdown broke him - and he's now insufferable. I don't mind hearing opinions with which I disagree, in fact, I like listening to an intelligent debate on the issues, but when the opinions are presented in his smarmy, self-righteous manner, while he changes the subject as soon as one of his guests dares disagree with him on something, it becomes unwatchable. It's too bad - I hope Bill get the help he so clearly needs.

And finally, happy hour! As a rule, I don't drink during the week (although I make exceptions) but on weekends, I allow myself a beer or two, or a glass of wine, or a cocktail (although I make exceptions). Limiting drinking to weekends lessens the potential of turning into a full-blown alcoholic in my retirement, and gives the weeks a greater sense of rhythm. And surprisingly, it's also made me enjoy alcohol less and less - some weekend nights, I simply don't feel like drinking, or finding that there's nothing in the house to drink, simply shrugging it off until the next weekend.

And so it goes. Saturdays are about the same as Fridays, although without the new music, and Sundays are about the same as Saturdays, although with John Oliver on HBO providing the nightly commentary I used to enjoy from Bill Maher.  

And that's my week. Thus is the life of an urban monk, this high-functioning introvert/misanthropic hermit. Just thought you'd want to know.

Now I Make the Moves, 36th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): After my walk yesterday, after the subsequent thunderstorm, and after I posted to WDW, another tree fell in the neighborhood. A pine, just like the tall, tall trees that surround and tower over my house. I get spooked every time a tree falls, partially PTSD from 2020 when a tree fell on my house, shattering the roof, and partially from the assumption that a falling tree will probably be my demise. 

Impermanence. If a tree falls and no one takes it as a reminder of the ephemeral nature of existence, does it contain any karma?

I don't want to sound like one of those pundits constantly complaining about misleading headlines in the New York Times and other mainstream media, but today The Guardian ran a headline, "Mitch McConnell leaves rehab center to continue recovery from fall at home," with a photograph of him in a wheelchair, wearing a jacket and tie, being led from a stately-looking room. He looks old and he's in a wheelchair, but he still looked far healthier that I imagined he would. Quite frankly, I suspected that he was either already dead or at least brain-dead.

It wasn't until one clicks on the headline for the full article that one finds a caption stating that the photograph was from last May, and McConnell was in the Capital being taken to a policy luncheon. I thought it was quite deceptive of The Guardian to use a photograph that appeared to depict what the headline read ("leaves rehab center") when for all we know he left the center in a stretcher or on a gurney. Or in a hearse. We still don't have proof of life.

I found the winner of today's "hilarious but true" typo in an online forum about climate change. "The bulk of the evidence suggests that if we stopped our emotions, global temperatures would stabilize (+/- a few tenths of a degree)." The poster obviously meant "emissions," not "emotions," but either way they still have a point - if we control our emotions, or more precisely, if we stop allowing them to control us, our outlook and behavior would stabilize. And when we stop flying off the handle and upsetting others, their outlook and behavior stabilizes, and so on in a karmic feedback loop. 

I'm going to try and start thinking of temper and anger as "carbon emotions" and see if that helps me reduce their emission.       

 

Foundation of the House, 35th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  Wednesday's routine is the same as Tuesday's, without hauling up the trash bins, so no need to go through it here. Thursday's is the same, too, to get that out of the way in advance. 

Betelgeuse is a walking day and I barely managed to get in my steps, a 4½-mile Madison, before the thunderclouds caught up to me. I got back to the house just in time, which was fine with me because it was oppressively humid outside.

WDW does not endorse political candidates (actually, we're extremely biased and make endorsements all the time, but isn't that what we're supposed to say?), but we are encouraged to see that Abdul El-Sayed won yesterday's Michigan Senate primary. We're encouraged by, and in turn offer our encouragement to, all Democratic Socialist candidates running for office. Times are changing and the pendulum's finally starting to swing back the other way, and the fact that so-called "moderate" politicians, the media, and the punditry class all look at the New Left with horror makes us only love the Democratic Socialists all the more.

Naturally, the Stable Genius, the Republican Party, parts of the Democratic Party, and the detestable Bill Maher call the Democratic Socialists "Communists" (they're not). The right and the moderates proudly assert that they're "Capitalists," and the media goes along with the framing that you're either a Communist or a Capitalist, and you have to choose between one or the other. Do you want new cars and a nice house, or do you want to live in a gulag and eat borscht five days a week?

The fact of the matter is we're all Capitalists. Every Democratic Socialist accepts the salary that goes with their elected position, and before entering politics they all traded their labor for wages to some extent or another. The real question is whether one is a Labor Capitalist or a Finance Capitalist.

Here's the issue - under the current economic climate of the United States, the finance capitalists are enjoying huge advantages over the labor capitalists. Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate that salaries, and with the increased profits, the Financial Capitalists can employ lobbyists and afford to donate to PACs to further their advantage even  more. Labor Capitalists are falling further and further behind, and as the economic disparity increases, the government and the Financial Capitalists are shrinking the social safety net, denying access to health care, and defunding public education.

Case in point: to earn $100,000 is salary, one has to pay from 15 to 20% in taxes, so your take-home pay is only $80,000 to $85,000. However, the tax on $100,000 earned through investments typically ranges from $0 to 15%, and if you can afford good accountants and financial advisors, you're probably paying close to the former than the latter. It infuriates me that when I withdraw money from my IRA or 401k, the money is taxed as salary, although only part of it is actual salary and the other part is interest and profit that the fund accrued over the years. 

The Democratic Socialists are not Communists but Labor Capitalists. They want to see tax policies and government benefits not skewed towards the ultra-wealthy, the investment class, and corporations, but to the salaried and hourly workers laboring for a living. It's the same Capitalist system, it just has different beneficiaries.

The "establishment," mainstream politics, and the media have all come to be dominated by the Finance Capitalists. So of course, the billionaires, the CEOs, the tech bros, and their hired politicians are terrified of not continuing to receive ever-larger slices of the pie, and feel threated by the Democratic Socialists/Labor Capitalists. Of course, they're going to paint pro-Labor Socialists as existential enemies to Mom, apple pie, and the American Way. Of course, they're going to call them "Communists," and "antisemitic," and atheistic (or worse, "Islamic"). Don't fall for it. 

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower instituted Democratic Socialist reforms in the 20th Century, America prospered and grew stronger. We need those same kind of leadership now, similar reforms, and leaders like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among those who will get us there.

But we don't endorse.                     

 

Day of the Smoking Plain, 34th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): My Monday routine was thrown off last night after I played a game too long and missed Rachel Maddow's show, and then when I finally did settle down at 11:00 pm I discovered that The Daily Show is off for the rest of the month. 

For years, The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's monologue afterwards were my gateway as I transitioned from whatever evening activities I was engaged in to bedtime. Save the game, put a bookmark in the novel, log off the internet - whatever I was doing that night, I would wrap it up at 11:00 for TDS and Colbert, and then go to bed.

But Colbert was taken off the air earlier this year, and now TDS is off until sometime in September. I've become like a little Rain Man ("Wapner at 4:00!") and if I don't catch my shows at their appointed hour, I'm thrown for a loop.

I'll get by. The only thing that distinguishes Tuesday from the rest of the week is it's the day to roll the trash dumpsters back up the driveway after the garbagemen and recycling truck have passed. Other than that, it's the same routine as every other day - wake up at 7:00, read a little if I can, or just lie back and listen to music until 9:00. Make coffee, take my vitals, do my puzzles, and from there it depends if it's a walking or a sitting day.

Today was a sitting day, my eighth since resuming practice following July's 2½-week hiatus. A strange thing happened today - at the end of the third (of three) 30-minute periods, I had no recollection of the end of the second period. I remembered the end of the first period, getting up to practice five minutes of kinhin (walking meditation), and then sitting back down, but the end of the second period? Nothing. Was I that zoned out, or am I going senile? Where was I then? Who or what was I? 

A heavy thunderstorm occurred between 12:30 and 2:00 today. The strange thing was that it didn't pass over like most storms usually do - looking at the radar, it just materialized right here over Atlanta, didn't move but just stayed in one spot over the city until it eventually dissipated. But for those 90 minutes, we were under severe thunderstorm and flash flood alerts and warnings. The National Weather Service says 0.58 inches of rain fell wherever they keep the Atlanta rain gauge.

I'll probably doing some gaming later. The Red Sox are back home at Fenway, so the games start at a reasonable hour again (they were starting at 10:00 pm while the team was on their West Coast road trip). If the game's televised here in Atlanta (an infrequent event), I'll watch it, otherwise I'll probably listen to the WEEI broadcast over SiriusXM radio. With no Daily Show, I'll have to go straight to bed after the game, but not before reading another chapter of Song of Solomon.

And thus pass by languid days and nights, as if in a dream.

 

Day of the Heart's Blood, 33rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): The forecast today was for rain and I almost didn't get my steps in today.

When I awoke this morning, the sky was overcast and it was still rather dark outside. When I saw on the weather app that storms were forecast at 12:00 noon, 2:00, and 4:00 pm, I resigned myself to another stepless day (I missed two days ago, too), and I took my time with the morning coffee and crossword puzzle (even though it was an easy Monday puzzle). 

I updated the sports blog (go, Red Sox!) and went grocery shopping, but while out and about, I noticed that although still overcast, it didn't actually look like rain. So after I got home, although it was already midafternoon, I went out and got in a 4.9-mile Madison. Better to keep a consistent routine of alternating-day walks, even if they're less than my goal of eight-mile Van Burens, than to fall into the habit of missing days if I see even the shadow of a cloud.

Also, weather forecasters don't know what the weather will be. I don't know why I listen to them.

My days are all about routines, daily routines, monthly routines, and annual routines. Since no one else in the world other than me is on the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, I'm forced to abide with the standard Gregorian calendar on many things. Mondays are the easy, 10-minutes-or-less, New York Times crossword puzzle, rolling the trash dumpsters down the hill for Tuesday morning pickups, and at night, watching Rachel Maddow on MSNOW and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. 

In addition, there's my daily routine activities: checking my vitals (weight and blood pressure) first thing in the morning, the Times' Spelling Bee and Wordle puzzles over coffee, music exploration on NTS radio, meals (morning English muffin, afternoon smoothie, and evening salad), and of course, time spent posting to this blog and its sisters. I also set some time aside each day for video games, and before bed each night, I try to read a chapter or two of some book (currently, I'm finally reading Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon) or a current New Yorker article.

It may not be exciting, but it's a life, and I find the routine and predictability enormously reassuring and satisfying. 

 

Day of the Grove, 32nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): "One cannot maintain oneself by oneself. Only when one gives up the idea of 'I," will one naturally become the self which is connected to the universe." - Kȏdȏ Sawaki

As Michael Pollan puts it, bodies didn't evolve to support brains. Brains evolved to support bodies. In other words, we're not life-support systems for our conception of an ego-self. The conception of an ego-self is just a genetic adaptation that evolved so that bodies can pass on their genes.

To put it another way, thoughts and mental constructs are just complex systems developed in the brain, which itself is a complex system of neurons and glands, which themselves are complex systems of cells, which are complex systems of organelles and organic molecules, which are complex systems of atoms, which are complex systems of neutrons, protons and electrons, which are complex systems of subatomic particles, which are complex systems arising out of potential. 

Complex systems within systems within systems, like some unfathomably complex clockwork all the way down. It's actually kind of marvelous when you think of it.  

 

Day of Destruction, 31st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Outside, picking up my mail (daily ritual) from the box. Nothing worthwhile, but almost nothing is by standard U.S. Mail anymore - even my bills are sent electronically. There was a 2026 SEC season calendar, a promo by a local real-estate agent, which (I'll take it back) does come in handy as a refrigerator-door reference. That and a brochure for a home remodeler/handyman that went straight to the recycle bin.

The reason I bring it up, though, is while at the mailbox I ran into a gentleman walking along the street who randomly asked me if there were any plans to upgrade the park across the street from me. For those who don't know, I live across from a tiny (just a couple acres) nature preserve/greenspace, which is a kind way of saying an overgrown streambed, a deeply incised little valley not suitable for development, commercial or residential. It's the home to a nesting pair of barred owls, occasional foxes, and an unfortunate number of snakes and mosquitoes. I've seen deer, full adults with antlers, racoons, rabbits, opossums, and various songbirds. It's a nice buffer between homes, and most of the year I can't see the houses across the street from me for all the foliage.   

So I asked the gentleman what he meant by "any plans." He said plans to develop it onto more of a park, with some open space for walking or a bench or some other form of recreation. I also got from him that he was from out of town (out of state actually) and was just killing a little time before arriving at his daughter's house so as not to awkwardly arrive early.

I explained that I and most of the neighbors - all of them, as far as I know - like the park undeveloped and just the way it is. It's a  nature preserve, not a traditional recreational park, and it's for the owls and other fauna more than for us, although we enjoy the privacy and quiet that it provides. A couple of years ago, the City of Atlanta floated a proposal to build an elevated trail through the park - a multi-use walking and bicycle path built on piers to keep it at street level. The neighborhood fiercely protested the plans and defended the current passive use of the park as a natural buffer zone. The city backed off the plan, citing a lack of community support.

He understood, wished me well, and we went our separate ways. He got in his car and drove away.

Not fifteen minutes later, I got a call from my next-door neighbor saying another neighbor told her there was a car parked near her house and some strange man wandering about. She was out of town and had no way of confirming for herself or of judging the threat (or lack) that he posed. I told her I had just talked to the man and he seemed harmless enough, just killing some time - it's perfectly legal to park near a city park and kill some time. It's kind of what they're for. Unfortunately, the park he picked off of Google maps wasn't set up for idling away a little time. I told her he wasn't trying to sell anything and wasn't overly nosy, as if he was casing the neighborhood or something. 

The other neighbor told her the car had been there since 7:30 this morning, which would have been odd if he were just passing some time before dropping in on his daughter. It's one thing to spend 15 minutes at a park with no other amenities and another thing to stay there for ten hours. I don't believe he was there all day - I didn't look out at that spot earlier today so I can't confirm he wasn't there, but I can't believe that someone wanting to kill some time at a park wouldn't have moved on to some more accommodating park after he saw the limited offerings our local greenspace provides. Perhaps that other neighbor saw some other car this morning as she left for work, and then saw the car of the man I met when she got home, and assumed it was the same car.

We all see the world through our own learned mental models, the cognitive maps we use to understand the world around us.  I'm a far left-leaning progressive, and I see a stranger enjoying the park as a natural and understandable thing, something I might do in a similar situation. We are not so different. That other neighbor, not the one who called me but the Gladys Kravitz neighbor who had called her (if you're old enough to have watched the sitcom Bewitched) is a conservative and sees anyone in the neighborhood she doesn't know personally as a threat. I'm actually surprised she called my next-door neighbor and not the police. 

I see a group of (presumably) Mexican or Latin-America men hanging out near a Home Depot as hard-working immigrants looking for a chance to legally earn a little money, and others see them as "illegals" trying to steal jobs and interfere with our elections. Same image, different perceptions. No wonder our politics are so far apart.

 

Day of the Last Beginning, 30th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): The 19th Century was really rife with rotten Presidents. Fun fact: While in the White House in 1886, a 49-year-old Grover Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom, the daughter of his late law partner and close friend. Cleveland was 27 years old when Frances was born and bought her first baby carriage. When his law partner died, Cleveland was the executor of the estate. Frances was never Cleveland's stepdaughter or adopted daughter, but he was close to her and her family all through her upbringing. "Grooming," anyone?

Cleveland, like the Stable Genius, served two non-consecutive terms as President. Benjamin Harrison, who served as his Biden by holding the presidency between Cleveland's two terms, was the grandson of the President William Henry Harrison, Old Tippecanoe himself, who gave the longest inaugural address in U.S. history in cold, wet weather and died of pneumonia a month later.

 

Day of the Third Angel, 29th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse):  More and more uninsured patients are showing up in emergency rooms and have been unable to pay their bills after Republican lawmakers cut Obamacare subsidies. The care they receive drives up the hospital's costs, forcing them to either raise their cost for care to insured patients or consider closing. Which means you're probably paying more for health care because of the Stable Genius' policy decisions.  He's also pledged to end Biden-era subsidies that lowered the cost of Medicare drug coverage, which will also drive up health-care costs.

The Stable Genius is clearly the stupidest man ever to occupy the White House, and we've had some piss-poor presidents. The first five were arguably okay, at least according to your standard amerikan mythology, but four of the first five owned slaves (John Adams was the exception) and Washington's "wooden teeth" were actually extracted from live slaves. Jefferson professed to be against slavery in principal although he owned several and then there's the whole Sally Hemmings affair. I don't know much about Madison and Monroe, other than they were Southern slaveholders, but the sixth president, J. Quincy Adams, like his father, also refrained from owning slaves. But then the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, was a real motherfucker - not only a slave owner but an actual slave trader and "breeder," as well as an Indian killer, responsible for the horrific "Trail of Tears" (ethnic cleansing, broken treaties, population displacement, genocide, et cet). Real piece of work, that Andrew Jackson. 

After Jackson, we had nearly a century of bad presidents (with the obvious exception of Lincoln), from old weird Martin van Buren through McKinley, who loved tariffs as much as you-know-who and favored corporate consolidation and monopolies. The presidents immediately before and after Lincoln, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, are usually considered the worst in U.S. history. 

We had another Indian-killer, William Henry Harrison, famous for the "Battle" of Tippecanoe (actually a genocide), and we had presidents who were too stupid to live more than a few months into their presidency. While not wearing a coat or hat in cold, wet weather, Old Tippecanoe gave the longest inaugural address in U.S. history and died of pneumonia a month later. "Old Rough and Ready," Zachary Taylor, ate copious amounts of cherries and iced milk on the first Fourth of July of his presidency and died after five days, the stupid motherfucker. 

But he was still smarter than the Stable Genius.

I walked a 7-mile Jackson today (I name my walks after the president whose number matches my mileage). It's still warm, but after Tuesday night's storms, the humidity is way down and it actually felt good to be outside again. It's nice to walk a Jackson and come home not soaked in sweat.

Deafening Robes of Dawn, 28th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): It was a wild night last night, and before your imagination runs rampant with lurid and outrageous fantasies, I'm talking about the weather, which is probably no surprise to alert readers. The weatherman estimates there were some 350,000 total cloud-to-cloud lightning flashes as a front passed over Atlanta between 12:30 and 2:00 am, and 35,000 cloud-to-ground strikes. 

I'm fine, no damage, didn't even lose power. But what a show! Over a quarter million lightning flashes in just ninety minutes makes the sky look like it's just constantly illuminated, like some living electrical field from a science fiction film. I barely got any sleep before 3:00 am.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was questioned by a Senate committee today. He didn't answer any questions, repeatedly taking the Fifth on every question. So Senate assholes like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, knowing he wouldn't respond, started asking him "when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife?" type questions, like "Are you willing to apologize to the American people for funding the Wuhan laboratory and purposely releasing the virus?" For the record, Fauci or any U.S. government agency, didn't fund the Chinese national laboratory, and it's still not known if the initial outbreak was a lab leak or not, although there's no evidence suggesting it was deliberate.

The reason for the testimony, some six to seven years after the covids pandemic, was because some CDC worker found a diary Fauci kept on a government server and turned it over to RFK, Jr., who turned it over to Sen. Paul,  who's had a years-long, obsessional feud with Fauci. President Biden pardoned Fauci for any activities he performed while in the government as a pre-emptive move to protect him from vindictive prosecution, so Paul's repeatedly stated goal of seeing Fauci "behind bars" is unlikely, unless he got him to testify under oath and then found some ever-so-slight discrepancy between past and present testimony so he could charge him with perjury. The hearing was really just a perjury trap - no one was pretending there was some urgent matter that required Senate investigation - and Fauci's attorneys advised him to take the Fifth on every question, regardless of how ludicrous, to avoid getting ensnared in that trap.

It was a ridiculous performance and far, far, far from the Senate's finest hour. It was closer to the McCarthy hearings than the Watergate investigation. I hope that Rand Paul gets the psychological help he so obviously needs, and on behalf of the American people, I thank Dr, Fauci for his service and apologize for his mistreatment today.

Finally, am I the only one not concerned that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey isn't a faithful and accurate adaptation of Homer's original poem? I haven't seen the movie yet, but my motivation for going isn't whether or not the film fully captures Homer's characterization of Ulysses' psychological profile, or if liberties were taken with the underlying mythology to make the story more palatable to 21st Century audiences. If I wanted to understand Homer and the ancient Greek mindset, I'd read the fucking book.

 

Day of Wages, 27th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): The outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire has not only taken down her post with misleading to downright factually incorrect climate data, but admitted it was a mistake. Even more, she still maintains that the current climate crisis "is the most important news today and part of the most important news this year, decade, and century. Be a climate activist. The climate needs you.," and replaced the misleading image with verifiably accurate maps and graphs in a revised post. 

Now I admire her even more. No more "otherwise."

We're still under heat advisories here in Atlanta. We hit a high of 93° degrees today with a heat index value of 96°. Helios is a walking day and I got my steps in today despite the heat, although I limited myself to a 6.8-mile Quincy.

Mike Allen of Axios had an interesting point in his morning newsletter email today, although he then discredited himself with some misguided "both sides-ism." He and co-author Jim VandeHei hypothesize that political party transformations follow a predictable six stages of evolution - recoil, squint, rationalize, submit, amplify, and purge. 

In Stage 1, the party Recoils from change, denouncing the new actors by name. For example, in 2016, Lindsey Graham called the Stable Genius a "kook," unfit for office, and Ted Cruz called him a "pathological liar." 

In Stage 2, "Squint," they support without looking too hard. "I haven't seen that tweet" became the Republicans go-to response during the Stable Genius' first term when they were asked about his social media posts. 

Stage 3, Rationalize, the "yes, but" stage, features statements like "I don't love the style, but the judges, the tax cuts, the border - he's a fighter." Accommodation becomes the norm, and justifications emerge for the means.

Submission is Stage 4, and dissent becomes career-ending. After Kevin McCarthy said that the Stable Genius bears responsibility for January 6, he had to fly to Mar-a-Lago to apologize. However, he's ousted as speaker three years later. Silence becomes political survival.

In Stage 5, Amplify, the party fully adopt the vocabulary, the style, and the maximalist claims. After privately calling the Stable Genius "America's Hitler" in 2016, JD Vance is now vice president and routinely seeks to show his own extremism, as does almost every Republican these days.

Finally, Stage 6, is the purge - actively oust anyone who disagrees. You either fully accept and amplify, or get exiled like Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Liz Cheney, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, and John Cornyn, despite many of them voting with the Stable Genius 99% of the time.

An interesting theory, and well documented. But then came their "both sides-ism," aka "the other side is even worse." Citing a Gallup poll that socialism is more popular than capitalism among Democrats, they say that recent electoral victories by self-proclaimed "democratic socialists" are a sign of a political reorientation on the left that's going thorough the same, six-stage process.

First of all, it's misleading to frame what's happening on the left as socialism vs. capitalism, as if they were opposite things. Socialism is not the opposite of capitalism. The Gallup poll might as well ask if ham sandwiches are or aren't more popular than reruns of "Friends." One might have a higher polling number than the other, but that doesn't make them opposing things.  They certainly are not opposites.

I'll repeat that again slowly for those of you on drugs: socialism is not the opposite of capitalism. That would be communism - the opposite of capitalism is communism. Socialism, especially democratic socialism, merely wants to see the government-level profits of capitalism distributed more evenly among the people, and spent for the betterment of all instead of just the top profit generators. The opposite of democratic socialism might be oligarchy, or the reckless, unfettered capitalism of the Gilded Age "Robber Barons."

The Democratic Party may or may not be going thorough a transformation right now, or a new political party or ideology may be  emerging. If so, I welcome it. But to frame it as capitalism versus socialism is just fucking stupid, Allen. Do your goddamn home work and think, t-h-i-n-k, before hitting the "Send" button next time, you reactionary tool.

Did you learn NOTHING from the outspoken feminist writer who I admire?

 

Fifth Day of the Icon, 26th of the Dog Days. 526 M.E. (Electra): We're back under a heat advisory here in Atlanta, with heat index values of 105 to 109 degrees forecast. I know I talk about the weather way to much here, but weather occurs at the intersection of my concerns about climate change and my own lived experience, especially with my alternating day, five- to eight-mile walks. 

The extreme wildfires and brutal heat waves around the world should be enough to concern anyone. There's no need to spread false information or sound false alarms with regard to climate change - the actual, documented record is already alarming enough.

So I was dismayed to find an alarming report on Bluesky stating the temperatures in Namibia and South Africa, which are currently in the antipodal winter, are reaching record temperatures of 36.1 to 40° C (97 to 104° F), 10° C higher than the summer norms. "Insane, mind-blowing winter heat," that called it, claiming "World climatic history rewritten!" in all capital letters. They included a map in their post with a lot of scary-looking red color all over southern Africa and scientific-sounding jargon in the title ("GFS 2-meter Temperature Anomaly based of CSFR 1981-2010 Climatology"). 

Cool story, except it doesn't seem to be the case. I checked several weather forecast sites, and they show high temperatures in Capetown, South Africa of 18 to 24° C (65 to 75° F) this week. But maybe Capetown, located on the coast, is just cooler than the desert temperatures to the north. But I checked Windhoek, Namibia, and the same thing - upper 70s (lower 20s in Celsius) this week. And what's the word in Johannesburg? Same thing, and actually a little cooler, with highs in the lower 60s (17° C) by the end of the week. 

I take no pleasure in debunking climate-change claims, but if we're not factual and scientific, we're no better than the climate-change deniers. The Bluesky account allows only certain people to comment (I'm not one of them) so I can't inquire about their source or ask for a reconciliation of  their conclusions with the easily verifiable weather forecasts for this week. 

Maybe it's an innocent mistake. After all, the graphic they posted doesn't mention the temperatures they cite, it just shows color-coded deviations from normal temperatures, with most of Namibia and South Africa appearing to fall in the +2.5 to +5° C range. Could they have added 2.5 to 5 to the wrong base temperatures? The post claims that the current temperatures are "10C above mid-summer averages," but I don't see anything in their graphic that supports that claim. 

"Greta was right," one person who is allowed to comment said below the post, which misses the mark entirely. Thunberg is an activist and an advocate, and a good one I'll add, but she'll be the first to tell you she's not a climatologist and shouldn't be considered the basis for climate-change science. But whatever, that's annoying, but the least of my concerns here.

An outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire reposted the Bluesky post, saying, "This is the most important news today and part of the most important news this year, decade, and century. Be a climate activist. The climate needs you." And there's the problem. When it's eventually discovered that the conclusions don't match the real-world weather reports, the denialists will incorrectly claim that all scientific data is likewise wrong and should be ignored. After all, if some random account on Bluesky gets the situation in Namibia wrong, how can we possible trust the IPCC or the near unanimous concern of the climate-science community? 

However, the outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire doesn't allow comments on her posts either, so I have no way of tapping on her shoulder and advise her that she may be spreading misinformation.   

Climate change is a problem, and the outspoken feminist writer who I otherwise admire is correct that we should be climate activists. The El Nino forming in the Pacific shows every indication that it's going to break all records, wildfires are raging across Canada, western Europe, and equatorial Africa, and CO₂ levels are approaching geological records. But no one is experiencing summertime extremes this winter in South Africa and Namibia, regardless of how well it fits the narrative we want to tell.

 

Fourth Day of the Icon, 25th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): There are rare earth elements present in northeast Mississippi, if you have an inclination to go mine them.

To determine their potential suitability for mining, geologists recently sampled Upper Cretaceous through Lower Eocene sand deposits in the region. The titanium minerals rutile and ilmenite, and their alteration product leucoxene, were present in the samples. Zircon, a source of uranium and hafnium was also present, as was  monazite, a source of thorium, and xenotime, a rare-earth source. 

These minerals have many uses and are important for manufacturing, engineering, and technological applications. Sampling and X-ray fluorescence identified at least five sites with percentages of heavy minerals over 2.5% with abundant titanium minerals, hafnium-containing zircon, uranium, thorium, and traces of monazite. 

With the recent interest in domestic sources of critical minerals and rare earth elements, these minerals in the northern Mississippi sand deposits could establish the area as an important and strategic resource. Just thought you'd like to know.

I walked an 8.6-mile Van Buren today. After missing my Betelgeuse walk due to rain, it felt good to get outside again.

 

Third Day of the Icon, 24th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): As wildfires are ravaging France and Spain, forcing some 250,000 people to evacuate their homes, and people worry about the Amazon rain forest, it's worth recognizing that it's Africa that has the highest rate of forest loss in the world. About 9.6 million acres of African forest, or about 15,000 square miles, were destroyed each year between 2010 and 2020.

Africa’s forests occur as rainforests in moist regions of central and west Africa, mostly in the Congo Basin, and in the vast Miombo woodlands, a warm, dry forest area in southern Africa. Clearing forests to make way for agricultural land is the main reason for deforestation in Africa, but unsustainable fuelwood harvesting, logging, and mining are also drivers. 

Severe, heatwave-driven wildfires are also occurring in North Africa, notably in Algeria, where extreme temperatures reaching up to 120° F have resulted in six deaths and over 1,500 blazes since early July. 

Here in the U.S., the third major heat-dome event this month is gathering strength over this weekend, spanning an area from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Plains and the Midwest. A heat dome occurs when a high-pressure atmospheric system acts as a sort of lid, trapping heat in place over a region for days or even weeks.

About 70 million people are expected to face excessive heat advisories as dangerously hot temperatures scorch much of the country’s southern and central states. Temperatures of 95 to 105° F are expected, with some areas of the southwest U.S. potentially reaching 120. The elevated heat is expected to linger into the coming week. But as long as it's not actively raining, I'm still going to take my alternating day walks. What doesn't kill you will make you predictable.

This whole planet is going up in flames! Talk about Dog Days! Where's that meme of a dog in a burning house saying "this is fine" when you need it?

 

Second Day of the Icon, 23rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Rain (again). I wonder if missing my alternating-day walk today will affect tomorrow's sitting. 

Tropical cyclone activity is not expected during the next 7 days.

Have you tried that new diarrhea lettuce yet? I hear it's all the rage.

Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week have caused fresh wildfires to break out in western Canada. As of this morning, there are 90 active wildfires in British Columbia and forests continued to ⁠burn in Ontario. 

More than 90,000 people have fled wildfires in Spain and France. Madrid has declared a national emergency and French authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on the Atlantic coast in the face of an “intense, highly unpredictable” wildfire that has burned through more than 30,900 acres of forest.

In happier news, Tesla’s stock fell about 13.5% yesterday in one of the biggest single-day market losses in the company’s history. The company lost about 27% of its market value as weaker-than-expected profits worry investors and soaring oil prices amp ​up inflation worries. Due to the declines in Tesla and SpaceX stock prices, Elon Musk lost his trillionaire status although, sadly, he still remains the world's wealthiest individual.

 

Day of the Icon, 22nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Every season in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar has a five-day sequence of repeating day names. In Childwinter, it was the five Days of the Hammer; in spring, the season of the vernal equinox, it was the five Days of the Zenith; and in Midsommar, the season of the summer solstice, it was the five Days of Light. There are no orbital events of note during the Dogs Days, but we do have Barkley, and today is the first of the Days of the Icon.

During my third period of meditation today, the concept for a screenplay leapt fully formed into my imagination: a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like It set among the REI, through-hiking community. The mise-en-scène takes advantage of the natural beauty of the southern Appalachians and contains realistic sequences of trail-hiking, climbing, and camping, along with witty repartee and clever dialogue and use of modern minimalist music in the soundtrack.

Here's the pitch - two whip-smart and clever sisters, Rosalind and Cecilia, avid outdoors enthusiasts and experienced long-distance hikers, are dismayed about a recent spate of reported violent assaults on the Appalachian Trail. For their own safety, they decide to hike a section of the trail disguised as men. Rosalind shocks Cecilia by taking a shaver to her head and shearing her long hair down to a buzz cut and, trying to think of the most macho, manly name she could come up with, decides on "Gunner" after Cecilia rejects "Butch," "Bubba," and "Rocky" as too obvious. So it's Gunner, Gunner Meade in full. Cecilia decides that a Muslim name would be intimidating and chooses "Ali," "Ali Anniya" after Rosalind rejects "Halal" as sounding too much like "Annie Hall" (note: the cross-dressing characters in As You Like It are Ganymede and Alienna). 

"Gunner" and "Ali" head out on the trail with their dog, Touchstone, tagging along with them. and reasonably pass for two young men. They come across other hikers at shelters, overlooks, and waterfalls, and their disguises hold up. However, one group of macho male hikers suspects them of being a gay couple and teases them, but one of those macho men develops a fixation on "Gunner" and eventually declares he's fallen in love ("I've never felt this way about a guy before"). A hiker from another group of openly gay hikers likewise falls in love with "Gunner," and the two competing suitors embark on a comical competition for his/her favor. 

Meanwhile, the two women, still in disguise, come across a quarrelling couple on the trail. The woman, confident in her attractiveness and quite full of herself, thinks of herself as somehow better than her partner and lets him know that, but Rosalind, as Gunnar, uses her scathing wit to put the narcissistic woman down, insulting her appearance and noting details that only another woman is likely to perceive. The woman is flabbergasted and has probably never been criticized for her looks before, and tries to challenge "Gunnar's" opinion. This ultimately leads to an attempted seduction, and the woman finds herself also in love with "Gunner" as well.

Rosalind and Ali try to keep their distance from "Gunner's" many admirers - the whole purpose of the disguises was to avoid attention! - but one or the other, or combinations of all three, keep showing up to impress and flatter "him" and outcompete the others. Ali finally announces that Gunnar has had enough, that he's made his decision on who he most likes, and will announce his preference at the next trailhead. 

As they approach the trailhead, Gunnar convinces the quarrelling couple that they're really best suited for each other - who else would put up with all their shit and bickering? In a clearing near the trailhead, she finally reveals her true identity (and gender) by stripping bare in the forest (strategically placed ferns and rhododendron keep the scene from being raunchy or exploitative) and convinces the macho hiker and the gay hiker that each one's preferences are actually best met by each other. She also reveals that she and Cecilia (Ali) are actually sisters and that theirs is actually the best and happiest friendship among all of the other hikers in the forest. As they finally reach the trailhead, an older couple, presumably their parents, lovingly greets them from a minivan. 

Cut to credits.

In lieu of paying me royalties, if you make the movie and turn a profit, you can donate money to the Benton Mackaye Association.

 

Day of the Heavy Sight, 21st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): Am I the only one who thinks Bone-Saw Arabia enriching uranium and potentially getting a nuclear weapon could turn out poorly? Is it a radical position to be alarmed by nuclear proliferation?

But what do I know? I'm just a retired old man, quietly bidding my time until the Grim Reaper makes his inevitable call.

I got my steps in today, a walking day, with a 9-1-mile Harrison. My walk coincided with the first game of today's doubleheader between the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles, and I listened to the game on Sirius radio through headphones as I walked. The Sox won, 6-3, their fifteenth consecutive victory, tying the franchise record for longest winning streak. They lost the second game of the DH, 5-1, tonight, ending the streak. Impermanence is swift, and nothing lasts forever. But following the streak over on the sports blog the past couple of weeks sure has been fun. Congratulations, Red Sox, for tying an 80-year-old record.

I've been a Red Sox fan since at least the bicentennial year of 1976. I was in Fenway Park on September 12, 1978 when Carl Yastrzemski got his 3,000th career hit and I've still got the ticket stub to prove it (bleachers, $2.00). I wasn't in the park but I was home watching the October 2, 1978 game on television when Bucky Fucking Dent hit a bloop fly ball over the Green Monster for a home run, and the Yankees beat the Sox in a one-game divisional playoff (Yankees suck). I also remember watching Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when a ground ball passed between Bill Buckner's legs, costing the Sox the game and ultimately the series.

And I remember the good times. Few moments in sports will ever pass the excitement of Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series, when the Red Sox, down 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, and having lost the third game, 19-8, won a 12-inning thriller and then the next three games to beat the Yankees, 4-3, in the series, and ultimately the World Series, their first Series title since 1918. 

I remember the subsequent World Series championships of  2007, 2013, and 2018. I remember Yaz and Jim Rice and Carlton Fisk and Freddie Lynn. I remember Nomar and Damon and Schilling and Pedro, and I remember Mookie and Big Papi. This is my 50th season cheering for this team, and even if I don't go back as far as the 1946 15-game win streak, I now have the 2026 streak to remember and cherish.

The last time I was in Fenway Park was September 17, 1989. Since then, because of where I was living, I've had season tickets to the Atlanta Braves (back in the '90s) and for one year (1993), the Pittsburgh Pirates, but the Red Sox have always been and always will be my team.

 

Rise of the Infanta, 20th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): Tropical Depression Two is now officially Tropical Storm Bertha, but it's still not heading this way so I still don't care.

Having resumed my alternating-day walks yesterday once the weather finally gave me a break, I also resumed my every-other-day sitting today. I hadn't sat since the 2nd of the Dog Days, but once I started it seemed like no time at all had elapsed - I was right back there in that old familiar state, observing the self once again. A per my usual routine, I sat for three 30-minute periods, separated by two five-minute kinhin (walking meditation) breaks.

Meanwhile, forestry experts are pointing out the obvious: Canada’s forest management practices are not to blame for the current wildfires. Climate change is driving conditions that make wildfires more frequent and more intense. There are nearly 900 wildfires burning across Canada and last week Toronto had the worst air quality of any major city in the world. But as the smoke spreads south to the U.S., the Stable Genius is blaming Canada for poor forest management.

Many of the fires now burning are in remote, difficult-to-access part of Canada There are no roads within many miles of the fires, and there’s no practical way that one could ever have enough boots on the ground and enough of a financial commitment to doing management to make any kind of real difference. Further, unmanaged forests are not just a Canadian phenomenon - there are vast stretches of Alaska that have a similar lack of roads. And the U.S. has had its share of wildfires, including major ones that took place last year in California and earlier this year in South Georgia.

It’s natural for forests to go through fire cycles, but the burning and the fires today are much more severe because of increased dryness due to changes in climate.  Warmer conditions lead to drier fuels -  the warmer it is, the faster things dry, and the drier they are, the faster they burn.

As the world warms, winters are no longer cold enough to kill off tree-eating beetles. Their populations explode, leaving millions of acres of dead trees ready to burn. Warmer winters also mean less snowpack, so soil dries out earlier and the fire season runs longer. And climate change has more than doubled the frequency of hotter, drier weather across Canada and increased the frequency of the lightning strikes that spark most fires in northern Alberta and British Columbia.

Both the U.S. and Canada are major contributors to the climate-change problem, although the U.S. emits more greenhouse gases. The U.S. has emitted more carbon than any country in history - around 435 billion tonnes since the 1800s. That's close to a quarter of all the carbon humans have ever put into the air, twelve times Canada's total and 50% more than China's 285 billion tonnes. But the Stable Genius denies that climate change is happening, and his administration has rolled back climate regulations and cut funding for climate-related projects. But good lord, how he whines and points the finger at others when the results of his feckless policies come back and bite Americans in the ass.

If politicians want to clear the wildfire smoke from the sky, the most effective place to start is by cutting the emissions that are driving these fires.

 

Day of Dew, 19th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Tropical Depression Two hasn't been named "Bertha" yet, and isn't forecast to grow into a full-blown (no pun intended) hurricane, but is still headed toward Houston so I still don't care. 

I finally got a multi-mile walk in today, a 9.9-mile Harrison, my first long walk since the Ninth of the Dog Days, and even that was a mere 5-mile Monroe. With my walking days finally back on schedule, I intend to resume my alternating-day meditation tomorrow. 

 A fun article in the journal, Nature, concludes that deaths from wildfire smoke are climate-driven and result in economic damages that exceed existing estimates of climate damages in the U.S. from all other causes combined. The research suggests that the health impacts of climate-driven wildfire smoke could be among the most important and costly consequences of a warming climate in the U.S.   

Wildfire activity has increased in the U.S. and is projected to accelerate under future climate-change scenarios, and evidence suggests that death from wildfire smoke could occur up to 3 years after exposure. Based on statistical tools and AI models, the authors project that fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke could result in 71,420 excess deaths per year by 2050 under a high-warming scenario, a 73% increase relative to the estimated 2011–2020 average annual excess deaths from smoke. Cumulative excess deaths from the smoke could reach 1.9 million between 2026 and 2055. 

But not to worry: the Stable Genius is on it. Today, he imposed 50% tariffs on most imported Canadian goods, claiming unfair discrimination against U.S. autos, alcohol, and cheese. He also asked his aides to look into additional tariffs on Canada because the wildfires hurt air quality in the U.S. The tariffs, of course, risk higher inflation here, and additional "incentives" won't stop the Canadian wildfires any sooner.  

If the Stable Genius really wanted to protect U.S. air quality, he wouldn't be starting new trade wars but instead work on new policies to reduce fossil-fuel consumption and increase renewable energy, but who am I kidding? He's not doing that!